I Can See You
by amieofabc
Summary: Sherlock can see the history of an object by touching it, but it's a flawed ability. When he meets an medical student with a gift that mirrors his, he can't help but want to learn more. Magical realism I guess, eventual JohnLock, rated T for safety, I know those little buggers'll swear eventually.
1. Chapter 1

"Special."

Yes, yes he was. Very special, in fact, though not because that was his first word, not even because of his gift, or even how quickly it had come to him. No, Sherlock Holmes had a fairly common gift, it was estimated nearly 2 out of every 10 people would have it. He'd started showing signs at age five, when he'd traced the path a book had followed from his mother to Mycroft to a basket in a living room. He could've gone back further, but Mrs. Holmes has drawn the line at tottering to the publishers. Five years old. Very young to understand a gift, unusual, but not unheard of.

What was special was a kind of defect that had come with him, something previously unseen. Sherlock couldn't see the pasts of people. It indicated something very wrong. A lack of empathy, certainly, though it didn't quite touch on sociopathy, thank goodness. Hand him a pencil, he could tell you every detail of its manufacture, down to the location of the tree it was cut from. Hold his hand, and, as he put it, "It goes blank. Dull."

He wishes, at age 14, that his gift was less common. Showing off doesn't resonate far when three other people in your class can do exactly what you do, but better, but with living people, not objects that nobody cares about the history of anyway.

At age 17 he explores the gully near his house and discovers a human skull. His mind blazes with questions, wonders if he can read it since it is, after all, an object now, dead like a pencil, or if it will yield as few answers as a brother's hand given that it once belonged to a living person.

There is only one way to know.

When his fingertips meet the smooth dryness of the bone plates, he almost instantly has to draw back, because the information, the past that the thing holds explodes behind his eyes in an overwhelming burst.

Jesus, it's readable.

He tries again, more slowly. Facts, dates, and something very new seep in more gently, one by one. _Born October 16, 1946. Educated at home. _After this, Sherlock swears he glimpses a woman, holding books, just an aftershadow of an image. _Concussion at 19 years. _This fact comes with knowledge of pain, as if Sherlock's head should be hurting terribly, but it's as if he's only witnessed the blow rather than felt it. By the time the skull's list of facts reaches its owner's marriage, he realizes that what he's seeing are memories. They move like gray ghosts, which in a sense is fitting, given that their owner is long dead. Sherlock wonders if the others see memories when they touch each other, and if those memories are in living color like their keepers.

He spends hours that night holding the skull, absorbing what it offers him. It never gives up a name; it must have died with the man, but this is new, and fascinating, and this object has what everything else can't, it has a personality. Just enough personality. It is in this way that the skull becomes his companion. They can't converse, obviously, but Sherlock has never needed conversation in a relationship. He knows the skull like he does most humans, and the skull doesn't call him a freak.

He explores cemeteries. Never digs anything up, no, but headstones, as it turns out, have stories too. Snippets of funerals, of the process of their engravings, stories they soak up from the corpses beneath them. For a year, Sherlock finds solace there.

He takes the skull with him to the university in London. There are no cemeteries nearby, only dozens of loud, living people. He tries to read them like bones, and eventually it actually comes quite easily to him based off the pasts of the objects around them. A shirt they also wore yesterday, a battered phone, not to mention the things he simply observed without a gift. There are patterns in the way his room mate speaks, in how often his biology teacher has her hair up every week, in smells and the size of someone's steps.

And what terrifies him about it all the most is that once you learn these patterns, people are _boring_. It's just like at the doctor's when they asked him to hold his mother's hand and report what he saw. It's dull. He isn't exhilarated by them anymore, isn't in constant wonder about how much new knowledge they have to offer because it isn't new anymore, none of it is.

He can feel his brain rotting.

So he turns to a more pedestrian method of stimulation.

Cocaine, now that is a fine substance. It makes his brain spark and quicken and it floats him away from this haze of vapidity and restlessness. And so long as he's careful nobody sees the track marks on his arms.

His logic gets flawed though, he starts believing things he shouldn't. Like how far his-or really anyone's-tolerance for higher doses can go.

It is through this flaw that he meets John Watson.


	2. Chapter 2

When his room mate finds him convulsing on the floor, he calls an ambulance, then Mycroft, who tells him firmly but calmly to wait where he is and ensure Sherlock doesn't hit his head on anything. Campus medical arrives first, and begin easing Sherlock onto a stretcher as Mycroft enters.

"His pulse?"

The room mate falters. "I-I didn't take it, I was trying to keep him breathing-" he stops when Mycroft raises a hand to silence him.

One of the medical students speaks up. "He's beating out of his chest. It's something of a miracle he hasn't gone into cardiac arrest."

"Is he going to?"

She swallows. Mycroft has always had that sort of presence, of being intimidating, someone you don't want to give bad news to. "We don't know. His seizure has stopped, but it's still a possibility. We're doing what we can to see that he doesn't."

"I'm sure you are." He isn't being sarcastic. If anything, it carries a slight threat of what could come if Sherlock dies on their watch. From inside the ambulance someone shouts something angry and panicked. Without a second glance, the girl shuts the doors so they drive away.

Thanks to the sheets that tell him exactly where he is, Sherlock is not confused when he wakes up. He even vaguely remembers what happened, though he is having trouble figuring how he let it happen; he'd measured the doses so carefully. When it occurs to him Mycroft probably knows about this, his stomach twists. Not out of fear, Mycroft's intimidation has never really had a hold on him, but anger and exasperation. He can just _hear _the condescending voice his brother will use to lecture him this time, the threats he'll make of calling their mum and doesn't he even _realize _what he puts people through? He hears the click of the door handle and sighs. It's the last thing he's in the mood for.

But it isn't Mycroft who enters. Instead it's a man maybe a year or so older than Sherlock-a student then, or an intern-with a slight tan-probably an athlete-and dark blonde hair. "Hello there," he says, sounding distracted. "I'm just here to check up on you. Sherlock, is it?" He nods, watches the man as he adjusts the IV bag next to his arm. He notices the length of his hair and nails, his posture.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

The man freezes momentarily, then checks something on the clipboard he brought in with him. "So you read people too." He checks the clipboard again, mutters something to himself that sounds like "Hang on-", then turns back to Sherlock. "Hang on, you didn't touch me."

"No. And I can't read people."

"Then how d'you-"

"I didn't need to. You keep your hair and nails short, but even, they're cut on a schedule. Not many university boys who do that, but the ones who do have very specific ideas regarding queen and country. Your posture indicates military training of some kind, as does your tan, you're clearly going to ship out soon, so where is it you're going, Afghanistan or Iraq?" he waits for the man to leave, or call him an arrogant, nosy sod. He does not. In fact, he does the unthinkable.

"That's amazing."

Almost involuntarily, Sherlock's eyebrows raise in surprise and confusion. "How so?"

The man's eyes crinkle slightly when he smiles. "We've only just met and I get the feeling that with ten more minutes you could read me back my life story. And all that without a gift. You've got a brilliant mind." Something very small and very warm hums for a moment in Sherlock's chest when he says that. It's not like Sherlock needs praise, but he also isn't immune to the dirty looks he gets in the hallways or how quickly people who try to warm up to him grow sick of him and leave. "Which reminds me, I did come in here to a job. How does someone smart as you do something like this?"

After a pause, Sherlock answers "Accidents happen."

"Really. Because I remember learning that most overdoses don't end up this badly. Most overdoses result in nausea and hallucinations. Seizures and near-cardiac arrests, that's another ballpark."

He knows what he's getting at. "What's your name?"

The man doesn't answer that. "They're ruling out a suicide attempt at the moment. Probably because your brother intervened."

"He was right to do so. Considering it _wasn't_ a suicide attempt."

The man just tightens his lips a little and now Sherlock is just irritated, because what does this man care about him, why should he be asking about this, he hadn't asked for anybody to be concerned, he'd just wanted to be left alone, he just wanted to float away on the spark in his brain and stop _caring. _He extends a hand. "Go on then, see for yourself. You can read me, can't you?"

He doesn't take his hand. He simply stands and exits. And that's even worse.

Mycroft is waiting for John when he comes out of the room. He asks him if he has considered his earlier offer of keeping an eye on Sherlock. John tells him no, and that he should kindly sod off. He asks him very angrily why anyone in their right mind covers up a possible suicide attempt, especially when the person involved is their brother. Mycroft replies by telling him that if he cares so very much, he could always take the matter into his own hands.

"Wait a year before you ship out." he says.

"I can take care of it." he says.

John glares at him and says he will consider it.


	3. Chapter 3

Soon, Sherlock begins having symptoms of withdrawals. At first it's nothing he hasn't handled before, a bit of shakiness, a headache. But as the hours drag on and he hasn't reached a fix of any kind, he finds himself in excruciating pain, fighting back nausea. In a series of scheduling errors that seem irritatingly orchestrated, John Watson-he'd finally given his name up to Sherlock during their second meeting-ends up at his side through all of it. Maybe that is for the best though; Sherlock seems to have taken a liking to him. Unwittingly, John had begun to reciprocate that liking, though he categorized it more as a fascination with him.

Not just because of his brains, thought that in itself was sufficiently interesting, but because, in the act of taking Sherlock's pulse, he'd noticed he could not read him like he did other people. It was like a blocked signal, and it worried him slightly. After all, this had never happened before. He wondered what it meant about the man's gift, about his own, if it had anything to do with their relationship or it was just a coincidence.

The second night of Sherlock's purge, it gets particularly bad. He starts hallucinating terrors, screams at demons only he can see. Of course John knows how important detox is. That doesn't make it any less difficult to watch a genius fall apart, and he wishes he could do more than watch and administer small doses of painkiller that don't seem to make a dent in the suffering. The worst part of it is the crying, he thinks. Whatever Sherlock is haunted about, it's hurting him with all it has right now, because his entire body shakes with those sobs. He wishes he could treat him like he does other people, just touch him once and know, know how to make it stop.

In the midst of his fit, Sherlock locks his hand onto John's.

Almost immediately, his breathing slows, he stops twisting. He jerks his head to the side and his eyes meet John's full of confusion, fear, and...wonder. He doesn't seem to be able to speak yet, but he's also stopped crying out. Eventually he falls asleep, still clutching John's palm.

It occurs to John that this is the first time Sherlock has touched him first.

The next morning, Sherlock wakes up slowly. Every muscle in his body is aching as if he'd been beaten for hours, and a vague nausea is still clinging to him. It's over though. Any traces of the drug were sweated and screamed out last night, though he doesn't know how much of it was imagined. He lies with his eyes closed until he hears John enter. He looks as tired as Sherlock feels.

"How're we feeling today?" he asks, seeing that Sherlock is awake.

"Less frantic, I'd say that's improvement."

He nods. "Definitely." he runs through a checklist of symptoms. When Sherlock denies suffering from any of them, he allows himself to relax. "I wanted to ask you something about last night." he says, sitting down next to the bed. "What do you remember about it?"

Sherlock's throat constricts a small amount. He swallows. "You're referring to when I stopped hallucinating."

"You grabbed my hand. Seemed to calm you down." No response. "Do you think you know why that is?"

"What exactly do you see when you touch me? What part of my past comes up?"

For some reason that irritates John. "This isn't about me."

"Oh, I think it is." he snaps back. "Because I saw things when I touched you that I've only ever seen in contact with a human skull, John, I saw memories. Presumably yours. So what happens when you touch me? Anything abnormal?"

He swallows, hard. "Sherlock, I can't see anything from you."

"And yet I can see you." It's more to himself, thinking out loud, than it is directed at John. "You're the only one, John, the only person my gift can connect to. Possibly the only person I can connect to." he says with a small smirk. There is a long silence as this seems to sink in for them both.

"Sherlock, I'd like to suggest something." his heart pounds, this is taking more courage than he expected it to.

"Hm?"

"What if-" he inhales, "What if I moved in with you?"

Sherlock's head snaps towards him so fast he can hear the bones in his neck pop. "When did Mycroft put you up to that?"

He surprises himself by being honest. "When you came in. I didn't say yes to him though, you know."

There is some kind of record John is breaking for how often he can get Sherlock Holmes' face to contort into confusion. "Then why-"

"It'll mean waiting a year to ship out. It'll mean dealing with a room mate who apparently likes cocaine and can be a right prick. So I wasn't going to hop in for money. Only if I really wanted to help you."

"That doesn't answer the question I had. Why is it you 'really want to help' me?"

Oh dear, that too is a difficult thing to say. "I dunno, really. I think you're a better person than you let on. And I'll be honest, I've never had the oppurtunity to get to know somebody the traditional way. On their terms. Might be interesting." It isn't what he means, not really. He means That Sherlock is a break in the monotony he notices but isn't supposed to. After all, athlete, soldier in training, promising career as a doctor when he gets back, he isn't supposed to be bored or discontent with his life. But maybe what he's said is sufficient.

"You expect me to believe you're willing to put off your grand military career to look after a potentially suicidal cocaine addict free of charge because you _can't _see anything when you touch me." it sounds like a demand.

His mouth surprises his brain for the second time in ten minutes. "Yeah, I do. I think I can help you."

Sherlock takes a moment, searching John's face, assessing him. "Fine." he says at last, "We'll give it a trial run. Can't hurt to have a doctor around. And anyone's better than that damn fool I lived with before."


End file.
